After playing some offline campaigns, I've decided to try tweak proposals that could be implimented in such a way as to improve the realm experience in a way that is least invasive to realms that are already designed. I use the offline realms as a basis for my suggestions as they most closely line up with the way the developers intended realms to work. Although, these suggestions shouldn't upset the balance of any of the realms already made in the online pool.

Village changes:
1) Have respect meter for villages, that depletes with lost villagers
-Lost village respect = less villagers regenerate and at slower pace
-You can replenish them by spending kudos as 'meta spell'
-Possibly have the village start in a neutral state were they generate relatively slow
and to a smaller number. You can then choose whether to pump in all those kudos into
them to raise efficiency or use them for another village.

2) Make it so that you can upgrade the totem with 5 or 6 spells, with mega
spell as a possibility. This would give the totem a bit more leverage to build
momentum. Possibly gaining enough mana to pop off a megaspell, if they manage
to secure mana sprites or kill enough enemies.

3) Have the recruitment of villages play into the highscore. This would create more
of a substantial connection between them and the overall strategy. This would show
its novelty in that last realm of the campaign that's more open world like, were you
have all of these different paths to go through and possible villages to recruit.
Balancing it in a way were they give a good enough point bonus to warrant going to
alongside lords could go a long ways.

4) Lose reputation for villages razed. Would make village fights, as well as the
decision of which ones to recruit carry a bit more meaning.

Overall, you need to strike a balance between the villages being an overpowered slog
of dragging units across the map, and being severely underwhelming. As of now, when you
first get villages, they really suck, while after a few measly upgrades, they become
way too overpowered. A big example of this is in the goblins and gravelings realm in the
offline campaign. If you were to only get the elf village, you'd generally be at a severe
disadvantage if the marauder came rolling through. Otherwise, towards the end of the realm
,by the time you attack the palace, your given 2 villages, as well as the loads of mana
that you've accumulated, which makes the palace battle extremely underwhelming.
(2 villages + upgrades is very easy to accomplish)

Mercs:
1) The ability to name mercs: Nothing really that i can think of for mercs, but this would
be a nice cosmetic feature to have, and could have the functional use of being able to
not lose track of which creatures are mercs and which are summons.

2) Some small level up system would be nice and get you to take better care of your mercs.
I remember in alpha days that the mercs would get that aura/gold plating to indicate which
ones upgraded after battle...I imagine this was taken out so that the art assetts could be
used for the king pledge rewards. Honestly, it was such a non-invasive feature in the game
that you could probably just go without the graphical indicators. It didn't even take up
any screen space, as the upgrades were just simple stat tweaks that you'd notice. Although,
you could possibly impliment assetts from the wizard rune activation animation to hover
around them (possibly an orb for each upgrade)

This feature could also be applied to lords in a way that they could upgrade their creatures
with reinforcement points.